Acoustic facilitation of object movement detection during self-motion

To retrieve the figures described in this paper, please refer to the published version: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.2757. ; In humans, as well as most animal species, perception of object motion is critical to successful interaction with the surrounding environment. Yet, as the observer also moves, the retinal projections of the various motion components add to each other and extracting accurate object motion becomes computationally challenging. Recent psychophysical studies have demonstrated that observers use a flow-parsing mechanism to estimate and subtract self-motion from the optic flow field. We investigated whether concurrent acoustic cues for motion can facilitate visual flow parsing, thereby enhancing the detection of moving objects during simulated self-motion. Participants identified an object (the target) that moved either forward or backward within a visual scene containing nine identical textured objects simulating forward observer translation. We found that spatially co-localized, directionally congruent, moving auditory stimuli enhanced object motion detection. Interestingly, subjects who performed poorly on the visual-only task benefited more from the addition of moving auditory stimuli. When auditory stimuli were not co-localized to the visual target, improvements in detection rates were weak. Taken together, these results suggest that parsing object motion from self-motion-induced optic flow can operate on multisensory object representations. ; L.M.V. and F.J.C. were supported by NIH grant RO1NS064100 to L.M.V. S.S.F. was supported by grants from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (PSI2010-15426 and CSD2007-00012), by the Comissionat per a Universitats i Recerca del DIUE (SRG2009-092) and by the European Research Council (StG-2010 263145).We thank Gerald Kidd and Chris Mason for their helpful suggestions and for generously making available to us the resources of the Sound Field Laboratory at Sargent College, Boston University, supported by grant P30 DC04663. We also thank Franco ...